Sewickley Herald

              Th
e
era
Id
The Sewickley Valley's Home-News Weekly
Vol.34.   No. 16.
SEWICKLEY, PA., THURSDAY, MARCH 17, 1938
Price 5 Cents
mjw»rtoot-ac».
"OHIO"
By Robert W. McKnight
(Remembering the St* Patrick's Day Flood of 1936)
p. !His;«i>
"SO  HE WAS BRIDLED AGAIN" BY  THE NEW EMSWORTH  DAM.  (This photograph by Harry Reno)
I
of  the  mountains,  the
Thoy bridled him,
Him,   the  wild  line,  tho  runner
galloper oi tho plains,
Him, who stood with his hocks in the Gulf
And made it bitter with his voiding,
Him, who with his forefeet pawed at tho mountains
And tho hills turned to hollows under his hoofs,
Who shook his head in his pride and the sun made rainbows in his white mane.
They bridled him and he suffered it.
He forgot for  a while his youth,  the  snorting of  his
nostrils tossed high in tho free air,
The pounding of his forefeet on tho flatlands,
The thunder of his hoofs in tho mountain valleys.
Ho  bore   them  willingly  to   tho  westward,   beyond   the
setting sun.
Ho served them faithfully, them and their sons and their
grandsons.
Ho bore their burdens and laughed at their weight.
And they frolicked with him and their children played on
his broad back as on their doorsteps.
They fondled him and spoke in his oar endearing phrases.
They called him '' Oyo, the White Ono, the Beautiful.''
They wero proud of him and ho gladly suffered their
bridle,
And though tho stain of their burdens dimmed tho luster
of his white coat,
Still  when  thoy  called  him  Ohio,  tho  White  One,  tho
Beautiful >
His heart responded and he neighed in pride.
But, as tho generations passed,
They became accustomed to him and they saw him not.
■ They know him not.
His coat was thick with filth.
His head still lay by the salt water
And his head on tho mighty Hills,
But they stabled him in. their own dung.
They bound him with fetters of stool, and with steel they
hobbled his foot.
They encompassed his heaving flanks in a .^traitjacket of
concrete.
"With ribbons of stool they harnessed him about on each
side.
They grudged him tho room he took, their cities hedged
him around.
With their fires thoy branded him, and when he winced,
Thoy jeered at him, saying, "Behold Ohio, the White One,
tho Beautiful!"
They thickened his blood with their poisons.
And for a. time he was too tired to think.
Ho lived as in a toiling dream.
But through the. murky lights of his slumber,
Through the sluggish reaches of his poisoned mind
Came to him memories of his youth,
That other he, the wild one, lord of the plains and the
mountains.
It was not the bridlo which shamed him
But the misuse, the indignities.
His head lay on the mountains
And into his deafened ears there came, as from a distance,
Tho soft falling of snow,
Tho patter of rain, tho sound of waters.
And through the  clogged norvo-ehaunels of his brain
crept whispers,
"Eise, Father, and strike them,
Beat thorn down I
Shako off your fetters and.be proud and strong once more.
Awake, Father, and strike!"
And he remembered his strength and his pride.
With a Hinge he rose to his knees, his'eyes glaring.
He shook on high his crested mano,
High above him tho foam of his mouth flew into the skies
And camo back to sparkle on his dingy coat.
And they behold his awakening and said,
"It is nothing. Ho has a dream; lie will sleep again."
But suddenly ho reared and plunged,
His hoofs tliundorod in tho mountain valleys,
His tail lashed tho plainlands.
Like a strong wind he fell upon them;
He destroyed and ravaged their fields.
He burst through their homes nnd did not know ho had
struck them.
Ho scattered them like chaff before a great wind.
His blood flowed hot and sweet in his veins,
The poison stultified him no more.
And they fled, where they could, to the mountains.
But ho, when ho saw them fleeing in terror,
Whon he saw their children mangled and bleeding under
his feet,
Ho repented of what he had done.
'' They thought they owned mo,'' he said.
"These little people are proud
Even as I am proud.
They thought they owned me.
It is not so; we aro partners and brothers
And they aro my people.''
A great weariness came upon him.
"I will sleep," ho said.
"I am weary, and when I awake I will niako amends to
them,
I do not Tear at their bridle; I will carry them and their
burdens,
But shame I will not endure.''
And as he slept_ they crept out of their hiding places
And gazed at him in awe, as at one they had never seen.
"This is Ohio," they said, "tho Strong Ono, tho Terrible;
Wherewithal shall we bind him now?
Thoro is not in all tho world a chain that will bind him."
But when he awoke, and thoy fled,
He gentled himself to tho haitcr
And opened liis mouth to tho bit.
And they, conscious of all they had done,
Were shamed for a moment and wondered.
So ho was bridled again and bent his neck to tho haltor.
But ho has not forgotten his wrath though it passed.
_\or will they, thoso that behold it.
_____